In analog TVs, closed caption (CC) text was sent within the TV signals and processed and displayed on the TVs. This meant that viewers could use the TV remote control (RC) to establish CC settings, e.g., “on” or “off”, as well as other CC-related settings.
With the advent of digital TV (DTV), however, no methods currently exist to carry CC data across digital interfaces (such as, e.g., HDMI) that now link multimedia sources such as set-top boxes with multimedia sinks such DTVs in a way that would permit the TV RC to be used to establish the CC settings. Instead, the source must integrate CC data in the TV signals (video) before sending the signals to the sink, meaning that the establishment of CC settings must be done by communicating with the source typically using a source RC (equivalently, by flipping between TV control and STB control using a single RC). Having to switch RCs or switch device control designation on a single RC is inconvenient and can be confusing to many viewers who typically require CC.